2018 Ravens 1st Round Draft Pick (#25) - Hayden Hurst, TE, South Carolina

[DreamKid]

7 minutes ago, drd23 said:

The playing down of his age in the press conference was a little disappointing

lol What did you want them to say? A FO shouldn't be in the business of slicing their first round pick hours after drafting him. 

They addressed it, said Pitta was older and he worked out fine. Clearly they think Hurst is a 1st round version of Pitta in a year where TE was our weakest positional group. I'm sure many if not all of us disagree with that assessment but what can you do.

I see the ability with Hurst. I just worry it was a product of his superior age to his peers. Also as @coordinator0 has pointed out many times, he needs works and refinement. Many of us were able to look past Ridley's age because of how polished he was, can't say the same about Hurst. He's a Raven now though so I hope he proves all of us wrong and blows up his rookie year.

[drd23]

4 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

lol What did you want them to say?

To acknowledge it.  They could have said something more along the lines of "We know that he's older than the normal rookie, but we think that his production in college is good enough to overcome that"

Saying that Pitta was older without acknowledging the difference in draft capital used just minimises it imo

[DreamKid]

1 minute ago, drd23 said:

To acknowledge it.  They could have said something more along the lines of "We know that he's older than the normal rookie, but we think that his production in college is good enough to overcome that"

Saying that Pitta was older without acknowledging the difference in draft capital used just minimises it imo

They acknowledged his advanced age as a fact but clearly never identified it as a weakness to begin with so they couldn't/wouldn't now. It obviously just wasn't a factor.

[alfalcone]

I hate this pick, he's going to be 25 before the start of the season (same age as Maxx Williams). he's not going to get any better and wasn't worth a first round pick to begin with.

[DreamKid]

Some key takeaways-

- has played TE for 2 years

- he interprets his lack of experience in football as a plus in that he has less wear and tear, a young football 24 if you will 

The massive athletic growth that occurs from 18-24 is over for him but not being in a football program's conditioning system for as long as other prospects could signal some athletic growth remains. Obvious A+ character you can gleam from one snippet. 

 

 

[DreamKid]

 

[drd23]

12 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

The massive athletic growth that occurs from 18-24 is over for him but not being in a football program's conditioning system for as long as other prospects could signal some athletic growth remains

Never having played football, someone is going to have to give me an idea of if there'd be any truth to this.  Its not like he was just being a slob sitting on a couch before he became a college football player - he was a professional athlete that presumably still would have had to do conditioning/weights/running etc so I'd imagine that any gains would be marginal.

I'm not sure about football, but in basketball, its been statistically proven that players reach their athletic peak at age 26.  If the same is true in football, that is a big concern for his ability to improve significantly over the next 4-5 years

[Mancunian Raven]

Talk about reaching! So much for BPA, hey, Ozzie? This guy would have been available in the middle of the second round. Effectively a third of the way through his career before he ever steps onto the field, and a good dozen players still on the board who were both younger and better.

And just to rub it in, I go getting my hopes up about DJ Moore, only to see him go before the Ravens pick. Then , presumably, the Falcons were laughing their ***** off as they ran  to get their pick in, to take Ridley.

Had to laugh at Mayock and Jeremiah talking about Ozzie's first two picks ever being hall of fame players. Yes, they were. But certainly none from the last few drafts will be.

[M.10.E]

"Worst pick ever"?!?! LOL No one is even saying that besides people on this forum/Ravens subreddit. It isn't a pretty pick, but the respected media members like it. The WRs were so good in this draft the best one fell to pick 24...

[Danand]

2 hours ago, drd23 said:

Never having played football, someone is going to have to give me an idea of if there'd be any truth to this.  Its not like he was just being a slob sitting on a couch before he became a college football player - he was a professional athlete that presumably still would have had to do conditioning/weights/running etc so I'd imagine that any gains would be marginal.

I'm not sure about football, but in basketball, its been statistically proven that players reach their athletic peak at age 26.  If the same is true in football, that is a big concern for his ability to improve significantly over the next 4-5 years

Playing handball and badminton into my late teens, and then switching to football, I can say from my experience, that it takes quite some time to alter the physique to take the hits. You have to become a lot more dense and build yourself to be as compact as possible compared to other types og sports.

[diamondbull424]

2 hours ago, drd23 said:

Never having played football, someone is going to have to give me an idea of if there'd be any truth to this.  Its not like he was just being a slob sitting on a couch before he became a college football player - he was a professional athlete that presumably still would have had to do conditioning/weights/running etc so I'd imagine that any gains would be marginal.

I'm not sure about football, but in basketball, its been statistically proven that players reach their athletic peak at age 26.  If the same is true in football, that is a big concern for his ability to improve significantly over the next 4-5 years

Legs: There is truth. Baseball has you focus on having explosive, strong, and durable legs which is absolutely important to football. So he’s good there. The only difference is he probably just needed to focus slightly less for on endurance training and more on strength training. But as a pitcher it was probably quite similar.

Core: Baseball also puts a huge emphasis on your core muscles because that creates rotational power for throwing the ball and maintain durability throughout an extremely long season. Your upper core is focused on more than your lower core. The core training is of a more secondary importance when compared to baseball. Though every sport values a strong core to some extent. 

Upper Body: Baseball focuses more on forearms and shoulders, but not so much with the biceps and pecs. Football is the opposite. As a blocker you want to have strong biceps and pecs to get your hands inside for leverage and lock them. The only counter to that is a good karate chop. This is probably the muscle group that Hurst will most likely have had to adjust his body to. The proof is in the pudding. At the combine the only lift that he decided not to participate in was the bench press (a measure of the strength of these muscles) and when he did bench at his pro day, he only put up a measly 16 reps and his arm length isn’t long enough to excuse that number.

Takeaway: Hurst should be a much more durable tight end option due to having trained all of his core muscles for such a long period of his life. On the other hand his blocking will have to focus more on using nuance to win, using angles and quickness vs power, similar to a ZBS offensive lineman vs a mammoth man blocking scheme OL.

Which given that he’s a tight end, I don’t really see that being a problem. The true problem comes with being older, how quickly can he pick up that nuance? He essentially has a rookie season to get down the nuance of blocking and route running before he’s in his physical prime. Thus he will likely have to choose. Focus more on route running and just block based off of effort alone.

The other good thing is since he was used so much as a blocker for the Gamecocks at USC, his blocking is already more developed than all of the other top 5 tight ends.

[Danand]

You don't kneed strong biceps whatsover. Its the triceps which you need. Biceps are for looking good when doing curls, but thats basically it.

[diamondbull424]

While I am not a huge fan of Hurst in round one because of his age and value, I did always like him in the 2nd-3rd round area. My biggest pet peeve wasn’t the player, but the value.

After my observation of the tight end group back in January, he was my second ranked TE behind Dallas Goedert and I had him ranked just ahead of Mike Gesicki. I thought he was the second best athlete on tape that I watched, was incredible explosive as a runner, and had very good hands. That said while he never looked like a deer in headlights, he just never looked as “natural” a playmaker as Goedert.

So even though I’m miffed that we passed on Goedert for Hurst, here might be some reasons why:

1. Age: They’re both older prospects. Hurst is currently 24 and 7 months, we know that. But Goedert is 23 and 3 months, which is less focused on. So both were men playing amongst boys. And didn’t have break out campaigns until 21.7 yrs old and 23 yrs old respectively.

2. Competition: Hurst had success as a tight end against the SEC, most talented conference in college football. Meanwhile Goedert had success against simply the top FCS talent and a few quality FBS teams only, granted his success was obliteration but again his competition.

3. Durability: Hurst as mentioned above did extensive training on his core for baseball and that should make him very durable. He also hasn’t missed a game for USC since he started. The same could have been said about Goedert, but then he got injured at the senior bowl. 

With the Ravens having had horrible injury luck with injuries to our premier tight end threats of the past 15 years (Todd Heap and Dennis Pitta), obtaining the most durable of the top tight ends might have been of signature importance.

4. Work Ethic: Goedert’s tape showed that he looked a little bit out of shape in his senior season, so perhaps that played a part in his injury at the combine. Yet Hurst looks incredibly svelte on tape and at the combine. With both of these players being quite old for prospects, neither will have much time to attack nuance before they’re in their physical prime, the idea might be that Goedert and Hurst are close enough options right now, but the front office and scouts might have felt based off of habits, Hurst could develop more in one year of immersed football than Goedert could in two.

5. Blocking/Motivation: Lastly, the biggest reason that I had Hurst and Goedert rated as the top two tight end options in this class was because both of them were effort blockers on tape. They were visibly better and displayed more effort than all the other options sans Ian Thomas.

That said, of the two players Hurst presented that blocking aggression from the jump in his first year as a starter. His 2016 tape showed plenty of effort, whereas the same can’t be said for Goedert. Dallas looked much improved as a blocker in his effort in 2017, but in 2016 he looked like he cared to block as much as Mark Andrews does on tape. Hurst always seemed to give it his all regardless of where he was lined up across the formation.

After reading articles on Goedert, his improvement came because he asked his coaches what he needed to improve on to be an NFL prospect and they said blocking. That’s good, but Hurst seemingly didn’t need to be given a carrot (reward) to give maximum effort. There are three kinds of motivation: the carrot (reward), the stick (punishment), and the mirror (self). The best producers are self motivated and so the Ravens might have felt Hurst was someone they could better trust to maintain motivation while Goedert might be the guy that dominates when he has something to prove and when he’s in a contract year, but otherwise gets complacent.

[berlin calling]

smh. 

well, he's a Raven now so i just gotta hope Ozzie finally got a TE pick right. don't mind the age if he gives em 8 good years, Pitta was same age if i remember correctly.

only thing i like is he apparently has sure hands. a quality not to be underrated for the Ravens.

[wackywabbit]

6 minutes ago, berlin calling said:

smh. 

well, he's a Raven now so i just gotta hope Ozzie finally got a TE pick right. don't mind the age if he gives em 8 good years, Pitta was same age if i remember correctly.

only thing i like is he apparently has sure hands. a quality not to be underrated for the Ravens.

He has great hands, not just good. 1% drop rate is incredible.